


And so the years did pass

by gremlins-came-and-got-me (Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark)



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Dragon!Derek, Jennifer Blake is Julia Baccari, Jennifer Blake is Not a Darach, Jennifer Blake is not presented as a bad guy (but she still is), Knight Stiles, M/M, Rape/Non-con Elements, Royal Argents, Royal Hales, Slight ABO dynamics (explained in story), Story Spoiler: Gerard Argent makes Derek rely on Jennifer, Warning: subverted Mpreg, see end notes
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-11
Updated: 2018-03-11
Packaged: 2019-03-30 00:57:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,689
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13939155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scared_Beings_in_the_Dark/pseuds/gremlins-came-and-got-me
Summary: Betrothed to the Argent Princess in Waiting, ten-year-old Derek Hale is transformed into a dragon on orders of King Gerard. When Derek misses the coronation of Princess Allison ten years later, the Hale Kingdom demands his return. King Gerard would rather go to war than surrender his leverage over their kingdom, so he decrees an order: Kill the Dragon and Marry the Princess.





	And so the years did pass

**Author's Note:**

> Heed any warnings placed on this story, especially those noted in the end notes.  
> This story was briefly edited by myself, and as such, errors do appear. I will re-read it at some point and make corrections then.  
> 

* * *

Derek was ten years old the first time he saw the Argent kingdom.

It was an impressive piece of land, nearly as large as his parents’ kingdom.

And their princess, a young girl called Allison, was just his age.

Words he didn’t know, like ‘betrothal’ and ‘alliance,’ were thrown over his head while he tried to interest Allison in the pretty stones he collected.

She glared at him, shaking her head whenever he handed her anything.

After all that, his parents left him. They returned to the Hale kingdom while he remained in the Argent kingdom.

And then, King Gerard, a man with a sour face and twenty rings, two for each finger, taught him a new word—loneliness.

The Argents knew magick.

Shapeshifter magick.

Derek was turned into a dragon.

He cried the first dozen nights while around his new, scaly body, King Gerard’s knights built a tower.

Derek stayed in this tower with his stones, the ones he’d brought with him, and a low-level mage who could magick food whenever she or Derek wanted.

They had a lot of cake for supper the first month.

Eventually, Derek became used to his body, and the fact that he couldn’t just leave the Argents’ kingdom even with his wings (mostly because they were not large enough to support his still-growing body and partly because Jennifer, the mage, could also perform a retrieval spell with one of his scales King Gerard kept in his scepter).

The first night Derek went into heat was the most frightened he’d ever been. He spent the whole week, curled on Jennifer’s bed, slick dripping from between his thighs while she conjured cool cloths which she used to clean him.

Every six months, he experienced heat, and each one was worse than the previous. Jennifer claimed it was because he needed a mate. She never mentioned Allison.

Years passed, slowly, and Derek explored the entire kingdom once he finally was large enough to support not only his own body weight, but the weight of Jennifer riding on his back. He also was strong enough to start collecting more stones. These ones weren’t as pretty as the ones from his parents’ kingdom, and Allison still had no interest in seeing them whenever he visited her, but they made Derek as happy as could be expected. Jennifer said it was his nature, the “why” of being a dragon.

In Derek’s tenth year as a dragon, war broke out.

Apparently, according to Jennifer, his parents had missed him at the reunion of the two kingdoms to celebrate Allison’s coronation as official princess.

As her betrothed, he was supposed to be by her side, but none of the mages had been able to change him back to human in time, and so he’d spent the day hunting more rocks in the northern quadrant of the kingdom.

The river there polished the rocks into near-perfect spheres that amused Derek to set up in traps to trip Jennifer. She was good-natured when she found one, but was certain to retaliate with food Derek did not enjoy.

An ever-present orange glow sat on the western horizon, the border between Argent and Hale kingdoms alight from the campfires of the knights’ factions that waited for conflict.

And, Allison moved into the tower.

She was housed in the top tier, where previously, Derek had created his nest. He tried not to resent her, but she threw out his stone collection, and his nest with the scraps of clothing he’d been able to salvage from his human outfit.

She spent her days ignoring both him and Jennifer, staring longingly toward the capital city and the castle beyond it.

Derek spent his days digging a new window into the tower and re-gathering his belongings so carelessly scattered upon the ground where any scavenger could run off with them.

He and Jennifer ate cake and candy and drank dandelion cordial every day for a week while Allison subsisted on crackers and water.

A meal for a prisoner, Jennifer would laugh before conjuring up an extra helping of croissants for Derek’s ravenous appetite. His heat hit hard that time, and he spent the time burrowed into his salvaged nest, crying in pain, real or imagined, as Jennifer tried to soothe him with berries gathered from the nearby forest or trickles of creek-water she purified with non-magick flame.

News of the war filtered in slowly. Jennifer was limited in her magick once the rest of the mages marched to war, and instead of magicking food, a courier delivered.

The first time the hapless young man, a shy fellow with a lithe build and soft cloths wrapped around his face and neck, arrived, Derek dove from the roof to land right next to him.

The courier had shrieked, thrown a heavy basket filled with small apples, rounds of cheese, and loaves of bread at Derek, and run off, one of his cloths unfurling and floating gracefully to the ground where Derek snagged it on a claw and lifted it to exam.

He tried not to feel insulted that their food was used as a weapon against him, but he felt the trade was acceptable: he got to carry in the food for Jennifer instead of making her lug the heavy thing all the way to the barely-used kitchen and he got a new wrap for his pillow.

The next few times, the young man returned with a group of knights, scrawny things that wouldn’t last a day at the border, and Derek behaved.

He would perch on the only tree strong enough to hold his weight and watch them approach the tower.

Slowly, the group dwindled until the only three who would ‘visit’ were the still-frightened courier, an asthmatic man with kind eyes and a crooked jaw, and the son of the local sheriff.

The son of the sheriff would often seek out Derek and grin or wink at him as they delivered the food. Something unfamiliar and frightening burst in Derek’s chest whenever he caught the wink. The smile made his stomach swoop and he’d find himself grinning back as best he could with his over-long front teeth and his non-existent lips.

At night, while Allison practiced archery with bows and arrows made from the old food baskets and thin leather strips taken from the mage’s uniform in Jennifer’s bed chambers, Derek would curl in his nest and dream of amber-brown eyes and an upturned nose.

Once, when Jennifer caught him waiting for the entourage, he explained the feelings he had, and she laughed and told him it was love. She asked him if he planned to ask the knight to spend his next heat with him.

Love wasn’t in the books from which she used to teach him. It also wasn’t in his relationship with Allison, whom he tolerated, and who did not tolerate him. So foreign was the idea of love that he decided to seek an outsider’s opinion and he plotted a way to isolate either the scarf-courier or the asthmatic knight to ask them.

Before he could, though, a decree came through the small basin Jennifer kept in her bedchamber.

She was being called to the front lines, and an order for the death of the terrifying dragon had been put forth.

Derek wanted to leave too, especially when he found Allison aiming her crafted weapons at him, but before she left Jennifer stole several of his scales and bound him to the tower.

Now, he couldn’t even go outside and see the knights and the courier. Not that he thought they would be happy to see him. He couldn’t even have cake or candy anymore since all the courier brought were breads and cheeses, which Allison took first, leaving him the moldy bits or the dried out ends of loaves.

Months passed, and one morning, Derek woke to find he was presenting. He swallowed the sobs he felt crawling up his throat. When the courier came to deliver the food, Allison left with him.

The knight, the love, Jennifer had said, climbed in the window and curled up next to him, patting his flank and talking softly. Derek couldn’t understand him, only that he was as soothing as Jennifer had ever been with her water or sweets.

He cried when the knight’s hand slipped and dipped into his heat, fingers stabbing gently into the wet hole.

He shuddered and arched, presenting again and again as the knight kept moving his fingers. He wailed in pleasure so hot it felt like pain, begging for something, anything, and the knight gave it to him.

When Derek finally came back to himself, the knight was gone and his thighs were sticky with something other than slick. The knight had taken the cloth from Derek’s pillow, the wrap the courier had dropped, and left in its place a thin silver chain.

Derek hurled the chain against the wall and dragged himself to his old nest where Allison’s perfume still permeated. He smashed her furniture and hurled it from the window as she had done to his possessions all those years ago. Then, he cleaned himself carefully, wiping away the sticky white fluid with the last bit of his human shirt.

For nearly a full month, Derek stayed up in the top of the tower. No one delivered food anymore, but there was a falcon from the east border of the Argent land that would visit, and she often brought him rabbits or other small mammals.

She sometimes could be persuaded to bring a stone or two, and Derek began piling his hoard on top of the trap door, leaving the only point of access as the window. Too bad he still couldn’t use it as he didn’t know where Jennifer had hidden his scales.

One morning, he woke to find that he should have been in heat, been presenting, been begging for the love-knight to return, only to be unable to fully balance and to be extremely unwell of the stomach.

Even the falcon’s visit today could not cheer him. And the part of lamb that she dropped for him only made him more ill.

Days turned into weeks turned into months until the illness passed and Derek realized he was swollen in the stomach despite not being able to eat much. Frightened, he threw his head back and let out a terrifying roar, not caring if it reminded King Gerard that he was still alive in spite of the death orders.

The response to his roar was not immediate. In fact, Derek fell asleep waiting to see if someone would try to make it through the door covered in stones or scale the wall to climb in the window.

When he woke again, it was to the love-knight caressing his snout. The young man had a satchel tied about his waist, and Derek glimpsed something green and shimmery in its depths. A stone, he thought, and lunged for it. His stomach dragged across the stone floor and he hiccupped at the sudden squirming it ignited in his abdomen.

Frightened, he began panting and the knight made soothing sounds, meaningless words that did nothing to comfort Derek. He nipped at the knight’s hand when it wandered too close to his mouth.

Pregnant, the knight said, excited. Derek thought he could bite the stupid person if his stomach would stop moving on its own. Pregnant? How could he be pregnant? He was a boy. He knew he went into heats, but he’d thought that was just because he’d been turned into a dragon.

Very suddenly, he missed Jennifer. For being his keeper, she was kind to him. He began whining, snuffling against his pillows and blankets and scraps of cloth. Surely he’d collected something from Jennifer, something that would make her absence a little easier to bear?

He finally found a strip from one of her dresses buried underneath everything. He grabbed it and shoved it at the knight, who was still making noises at him. Derek shook his head. Find Jennifer, he tried to say, but it came out as a growl. The knight patted at him, took the scrap, and climbed out of the tower.

Now, Derek was all alone with his still-moving stomach. He rested his hand on it, talons curled so the sharp edges were well away from his soft abdomen.

He remembered the shimmering green things in the knight’s bag. He’d thought they looked like his scales, the ones Jennifer had hidden all over the tower. Maybe, since the knight had them, he could leave?

Derek crawled to the window, sticking his nose into the open air. It smelled like after-rain and smoke. The battle was growing closer, Argent land falling to Hale soldiers.

Derek shuddered, tucking his wings close to his back and sucking in his swollen stomach as best as he could so that he could wriggle his way out of the opening.

The insistent tug of his scales drawing him back was gone. He managed to crawl up the tower to the very top of it, settling down and wrapping his wings around himself.

From up here, he could see the knight walking toward the castle. Derek wondered if he could fly, catch up to the knight, and steal his scales.

Cautiously, he rose on his forefeet, belly swaying as he maneuvered into a launch-formation. Before he could spread his wings and flap, he felt his stomach heave with the force of something—his child—moving inside.

Best not to tempt fate, he decided, curling back down. At least it was a lovely day, sunshine and warmth. He snorted, sniffing the fresh breeze as it caressed his snout. He sneezed when the wind changed and blew smoke at him.

His wings ached with disuse, and he knew his balance was off with the extra weight of his child.

The campfires of the soldiers were nearby, and he could hear the slight racket of weapons being clashed.

He longed to be free, to be down on the ground wandering amongst the peoples, even if he were still a fearsome dragon. The knight turned at the fork where he could go left to the castle or right to the town. He waved something at Derek, the scrap from Jennifer’s dress and marched onward to the left.

He was going to the castle.

He did have Derek’s scales.

He could destroy the Argent kingdom and free Derek.

Derek scrambled up, stretching his wings and flapping them desperately. With his added weight, it was difficult, but once he realized he could shift the squirming bulge, he also realized that he could use it to turn in midair. The child was not any heavier than Jennifer had been, so he could still fly.

By the time he reached the rampart of the castle, the knight had King Gerard pinned under his knee while he held a blade to his throat. Discarded next to them was the scepter. Derek dragged it to himself, using a claw to slice through the rawhide keeping his scale in place.

As soon as it fell out, a weight Derek never knew he’d been under lifted. His wings curled down against his back, and he folded down, nosing at his scale as his body trembled.

The scale felt warm against his cheek. He picked it up, laying it against his side where it fit in one of the empty patches left behind when Jennifer removed his scales.

The knight was yelling at King Gerard, but Derek was too entranced with his scale to pay them any mind. His scale was back where it belonged, the others in the knight’s bag humming with the same heat. He was complete again after far too long.

The knight threw King Gerard away from him, scooping up the scale Derek was holding and tucking it in his bag. He shoved at Derek until he lumbered to his feet, his belly swaying with the motion.

King Gerard sneered at them, and the knight’s face went white.

Then he said something that made King Gerard laugh. Derek was confused. How could _doing the right thing_ be funny? Wasn’t it best to do the right thing? Like, sharing food with Allison even though she destroyed his nest? Like, Jennifer helping him through his heats? King Gerard had never done what was the right thing for Derek so why was he laughing at the knight?

Derek nuzzled at the bag, following the knight as he stomped down a flight of stairs wide enough that Derek’s body could fit on them. King Gerard followed them, yelling threats.

The knight finally turned to him. The cold fury in his eyes made Derek recoil. His words gave King Gerard pause, and the knight began marching again. Derek trailed after him.

He tried to ask if they could return to the tower for his collections of stones, but the knight refused to acknowledge him.

If Derek hadn’t wanted his scales back so badly, he would have gone back to the tower himself. Instead, he let the knight lead him into the heart of an encampment.

The soldiers began shouting in terror at the sight of them. Derek glanced around, marveling at all the people gathered here. He’d never seen this many people in one place before, not even in King Gerard’s court, and not in his parents’ court.

The sharp scent of blood and unwashed bodies assaulted Derek’s nose, and he paused to dry heave over a cleared patch of ground. The knight paused, concern pinching his brows together. Derek shook his wings and strutted forward. The sooner they left this place the better where he was concerned.

And then, they passed a tent, and another scent, this one less unpleasant, reached Derek, and he froze.

He whined deep in his throat, sniffing the air again to be certain.

Jennifer cried when she saw him. Derek crawled into the tent, barely able to fit. He pressed his snout into her lap, snuffling into her mage’s robes, which lacked the usual earthy air of magick. She’d been here for a while, and she was definitely in need of a bath, but she was still his Jennifer.

The knight dragged Derek away by his tail, but since Derek was stronger, he just flipped his tail until it sent the knight sprawling. Jennifer laughed at him, scratching under his chin the way he liked.

Derek tried to tell her about the knight stealing all his scales, but Jennifer seemed to have lost the ability to understand him.

He didn’t care. She was still his, and she still could speak a language he understood with her touches.

Jennifer stopped petting him, and Derek craned his neck so he could fix an eye on the front of the tent.

“Derek,” a woman said. She looked older, worn around the edges, but he still recognized his mother. For the first time in years, he wished he were human enough to respond at a level that he could be understood. As it was, he flicked his tail, both to show his pleasure at being recognized and to tell her to back off. “My son.” His mother held a hand out to him, and Derek huffed at her palm.

“What’s wrong with him?” she asked Jennifer.

Jennifer shrugged, and Derek knew then that she’d lost her source of magick. He huffed again to show his displeasure at this turn of events and then nuzzled Jennifer to tell her that he wasn’t mad at her.

His belly grazed her knees, and his child twisted inside. Jennifer’s face paled and she stuttered a few low words to Derek’s mother.

“Pregnant?”

Derek patted his stomach to show his mother that he indeed was with child. Then he extended a claw to the knight still standing nearby, his hands fisted in his bag, the glow of Derek’s scales visible.

“How is that possible?”

“I only know one kind of shapeshifter magick,” Jennifer explained. “The female version of a dragon. Your son is still your son, but—”

“He can be impregnated,” Derek’s father said. He looked at Derek like he was wrong, like it was Derek’s fault that the knight had decided to help with his heat.

Jennifer followed Derek’s gaze to the knight and his bag. “If I have all his scales, I can change him back. Obviously, I would have to do that after he gives birth, but it can be done.”

Derek cocked his head at Jennifer. She didn’t have magick in her anymore. How could she turn him back if she didn’t have any magick?

The knight handed his bag to Derek’s mother, and she pulled out a scale. Derek leaned over and gently removed it from her hand with his teeth. He set it in his palm, running a claw along the edge of it. His scales reminded him of his rock collection. They were his. No one else’s.

“I need one favor before I can change him back though,” Jennifer said. “I need the blood of a tyrant.”

“King Gerard qualifies,” the knight said. “The way he runs these lands is nothing short of cruel. We are fighting your people because our king stole your child and refused to return him. Our princess is at this moment being married. Once she has control of the throne, King Gerard will be imprisoned for treason. By the mercy of our princess, I will make certain that we surrender him to you to do with as you see fit.”

Then, the knight turned as if to go.

“Wait, knight,” Derek’s mother called. “Grant us your name that we may thank you when there is peace.”

The knight looked to Derek before saying, lowly, “My name is Stiles, your Majesty.” He curtsied and disappeared into the milling soldiers. Derek rubbed his belly. His child’s father was a strange name indeed, but named he was. Derek would tell his child stories of its father and his kindness in returning to Derek a way to be human again.

Later, maybe, he’d tell his mother and father just who fathered his child.

For now, Derek nuzzled at Jennifer, blowing warmed air over her skin. She patted his snout in thanks. He was back with his parents. He could go back home.

He was finally free.

~ The End ~

* * *

**Epilogue**

Derek’s child was born healthy, a girl that his mother wrapped in her royal cloak and carried away while Jennifer pressed forward, a goblet of blood in one hand, Derek’s scales in the other.

She spoke her incantation quickly, dousing Derek’s body with the blood and then sticking the scales into the holes left behind when they were removed.

When she was done, she stepped back, allowing a guard to place a chain around her torso while another guard wiped the blood from her hands.

Derek stretched, his wings unfurled as he scrambled up. His stomach still lurched like the child was inside him, but he already felt lighter.

The transformation was quicker than when he was ten, and for the first time in over a decade, Derek stood on two feet instead of four.

He was stark naked, standing in a cold room with three people eying him. Jennifer looked like she wanted to cry while the guards just stared at him.

Derek tried to speak, but his words were gone, his throat dry and voice cracked. Jennifer still smiled at him.

“I’m really back,” he whispered, hugging her tightly. “Thank you, thank you, thank you.”

“Go on, go to your family.”

“My lord,” one of the guards said, holding out a robe. Derek took it gingerly, rubbing the material through his fingers. Fingers! He had fingers again.

“Thank you,” he whispered to the guard, wrapping the robe around himself. The guard tied it for him.

“Your mother and child are in the throne room,” she said, placing a ringlet of interwoven golden leaves upon his head. “Do you wish for an escort?”

He nodded. The halls were too small for Derek’s dragon, and he hadn’t had the ability to explore his parents’ castle. He thought he recalled the way, but he felt better following the guard.

When he entered the room, he found his mother sitting on her throne, his child in her lap while his father sat to her left.

“Prince Derek,” the guard introduced, bowing deeply before she stepped away.

Derek turned to his parents. His mother appeared to be crying, which she hadn’t done at all during his seventeen hours of labor. His father looked happy, proud.

“My son is returned,” his mother said. “My son is restored.”

“There is much for you to do, my son,” his father said. “Many things to catch up on. But for now, please, join us. Be with us.”

Derek settled onto an ornate chair dragged between his parents’ thrones. His mother handed him his daughter.

“What shall you name her?” she asked.

“I was thinking to honor her father,” he whispered back, voice still far too unsteady to trust. “He was the knight who returned my scales.”

His mother’s face tightened into shock and anger. “He is the father?” she asked, and Derek nodded.

“There was no one else. Who could it be but him?” He smiled down at his daughter, at her speckled face, the same as her father. “What became of him?” he asked. “His father was the local sheriff of the town near the castle. I assume he took that position when the princess took the throne.”

“Actually, he is here seeking asylum,” Derek’s father said. “His own country does not want him because he betrayed them by releasing you and bargaining the conditions of the former king’s demise. We were thinking that we would grant it to him, but of course, we will take into consideration his contact with you.”

“If I have any say at all, then I would say grant him his asylum. I have lived with the princess. She is not forgiving. My daughter deserves to know her father. Does she not? Would you deny her that opportunity?”

“It would mean that you shall have to marry him in order to allow your daughter to ascend the throne when the times comes.”

“And would that be such a hardship?” Derek asked. “I could learn in time to love him. When I was a dragon, I already did have affection for him.”

“Then it is settled. Knight Stiles, join us.”

The guard who had led Derek in earlier returned to announce Knight Stiles’ entrance.

The knight looked nothing like the man who had helped Derek through his heat and nothing like the man who had threatened King Gerard for Derek. He was tired, skin drawn and bruised, clothes torn, head shaved like that of the Argent prisoners awaiting trade with Queen Allison.

Stiles knelt, head bowed, before the three thrones.

Derek’s father spoke in a booming voice. “In light of your bravery for our country and for our crown prince, the lands of Beaconium, ruled by Talia Hale of the first house, grant your request for asylum.”

“And,” Derek’s mother added, “the lands of Beaconium, of the first house, also offer to you the hand of our son, Derek, to be united in marriage as accorded to our customs. Arise, Sir Stiles of the lands of Beaconium.”

The knight looked up sharply at that. “Marriage?” he asked.

Derek nodded.

“If you’ll have me, my lord. I would be more than honored.”

“So it is,” Derek’s father declared, clapping his hands and startling the baby. Derek rocked her while his mother and father began discussing ancient ceremonies to do with binding oneself to marriage.

The knight, Stiles, rose slowly, approaching him. “May I?” he asked, and Derek surrendered his daughter to him.

This was a desirable outcome, he thought to himself. He was home, he had love in his life, and he was no longer a dragon, although the urge to collect rocks was still strong.

Things were good for him now.

And so the years did pass as such.

~ The (Actual) End ~

**Author's Note:**

>  **Please note:** this story is supposed to leave a bitter taste. Emotionally, Derek is still about ten years old even though he’s twenty-plus during the time of the events. Since it is a mashup of modern ideals in a medieval setting, Derek’s trauma and autonomy are not discussed. There is minor outrage (from Talia) at the idea of giving Derek to what amounts to his rapist (extremely dubious consent at best, outright rape at worst—and I’m on the latter side) but ultimately, politics win.  
>  Please remember that this is a work of fiction and that I tend not to shy away from difficult topics. Thank you to all who read. You are much appreciated.


End file.
